Monday, June 14, 2010

Excellent advice! We all know how we slave away for our writing and we become attached to it. However, there is a time when you just have to let parts go. I know you worked long and hard on that paragraph (or page, or chapter), but if it's not relevant to your story or project as a whole it ends up being unnecessary filler. I know it's painful-but your story and your readers will thank you. You gotta let it go, man. Leave out the boring parts that people are going to skip anyway.

Friday, June 4, 2010

"Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction." ~Dylan Thomas, letter to Vernon Watkins, March 1938

If your writing is bad, celebrate. Bad writing means you've actually gotten something out onto the page. Everything has to start somewhere, and sometimes it turns out better than you anticipated. To me, you've gotta have clay before you can sculpt. This means that you have to have something to work with before you can make it into something beautiful. So if you're postponing writing while you figure out how to get it down just right, throw caution to the wind. Don't let the lack of perfection prevent you from writing. Just do it write now. Be committed--and "if things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction." Don't fail because you never try. If you're going to fail, go down in glorious flames (and as we discussed you'll actually have something to work with).

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible." ~Vladimir Nabakov

Anyone who is feeling a lack of control in his or her life ought to try writing. If you didn't have delusions of grandeur before you began, you may develop a God Complex in the process. I know of nothing that bestows more power upon the individual than the process of creation with limitless possibilities, which writing is. The stories are there--the words are at your fingertips. Your job is merely to make the visions in your head real to everyone else.

About Me

Valerie

I am future New York Times bestselling author who also wants to be a circus performer, ninja, assasin, millionaire, and jewelry designer. This list changes periodically as I develop new interests. I have a strange fascination with exercise infomercials and muscles, and hope to look like a fitness model someday. Or be one. But probably just look like one. Some day.